The USCCB, Catholic Charities, And Refugee Resettlement

I still find myself in a peculiar rabbit hole trying to make sense of the various refugee resettlement programs for which the Trump administration has cut funding, especially those delegated by various departments to the US Catholic Bishops and Catholic Charities. No discussion I've seen is especially precise or seems to reflect any real understanding of how these programs work, much less which program is which, especially those under the Catholic umbrella.

Let's start with the USCCB's lawsuit against the Trump administration filed in February:

Catholic bishops sued the Trump administration on Tuesday [February 18] over its abrupt halt to funding of refugee resettlement, calling the action unlawful and harmful to newly arrived refugees and to the nation's largest private resettlement program.

. . . The conference's Migration and Refugee Services has sent layoff notices to 50 workers, more than half its staff, with additional cuts expected in local Catholic Charities offices that partner with the national office, the lawsuit said.

. . . The conference is one of 10 national agencies, most of them faith-based, that serve refugees and that have been sent scrambling since receiving a Jan. 24 State Department letter informing them of an immediate suspension of funding pending a review of foreign-aid programs.

Here's where the murk begins. This lawsuit, as far as I can determine, is over the termination of a single program covered by an agreement or agreements between the US bishops' conference and the State Department, which is actually pretty small as these things go.

The USCCB said it is still awaiting about $13 million in reimbursements for expenses prior to Jan. 24.

As of Jan. 25, it said, there were 6,758 refugees assigned by the government to USCCB's care that had been in the country less than 90 days, the period of time for which they're eligible for resettlement aid.

But as far as I've been able to determine, the number of refugees in Catholic-sponsored programs, and the amounts of money involved, are far larger than this story implies. This particular lawsuit is against only the State Department and the Department of Health, Educstion, and Welfare, but many other agencies fund the whole Catholic refugee resettlement enterprise:

President Joe Biden’s border policies were a boon for private religious charities associated with the Catholic Church, which collectively received billions in grant money while helping house and resettle migrants, while a federal watchdog warned about mismanaged funds and a potential for fraud.

The funding for these humanitarian programs that came through the Departments of Health and Human Services and Homeland Security as well as the Federal Emergency Management Agency has come under renewed scrutiny by President Trump and his administration, who seek to reverse years of financial incentives for the crisis of border crossings under their predecessor.

Catholic Charities USA, comprised of 168 local member agencies across the United States, is one of the largest private recipients of government funding under several immigration-related programs that critics have said allowed the Biden administration to relocate and shelter migrants in the United States.

According to data from USAspending.gov, Catholic Charities branches across the United States collected over $2 billion in federal grants over the last four years of the Biden administration, primarily through the Department of Health and Human Services which granted about $1.93 billion for programs. Other agencies, like the Department of Homeland Security and Housing and Urban Development also doled out significant—if smaller—sums, about $156 million and $138 million, respectively.

This money comes from a wide variety of individual programs and individual grants, and it covers a variety of migrants in the country under different legal conditions. For instance, migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela who had been here under the CHNV program are not, strictly speaking, "legal", but were under a condition known as "humanitarian parole" that lasted for a maximum of two years, during which they were expected to find a way to achieve full legal status.

A separate, different quasi-legal status is Temporary Protected Status,

a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) program that allows migrants from designated countries to reside legally in the United States for a period of up to eighteen months, which the U.S. government can renew indefinitely. During that period, TPS holders are eligible for employment and travel authorization and are protected from deportation. The program does not include a path to permanent residency or U.S. citizenship, but TPS recipients can apply for those designations separately.

Currently designated countries under the TPS program include Afghanistan, Burma, Ethiopia, El Salvador, Haiti, Lebanon, Somalia, and others. So as one promiiinent example, migrants from Haiti could be here under either humanitarian parole or temporary protected status, under programs with different funding, different conditions, and different lengths, but in general, they have not been "legal".

But the program under which the USCCB is suing the Trump administration is none of these, it's with the State Department:

Nearly 7,000 refugees had been assigned by the government to the bishops' resettlement program, under two contracts, court records said, for the 2025 fiscal year that awarded the conference about $65 million for initial resettlement expenses.

The bishops' conference received a letter on Jan. 24 from the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration notifying it that its refugee resettlement contracts were "immediately suspended" pending a review of foreign assistance programs.

I'm somewhat puzzled that the US bishops are suing over only this one, relatively small program, when the programs with Catholic Charities are much larger and cover many more migrants -- and they all do pretty much the same thing. But even this distinction neglects the problem that Catholic Charities USA, the national office, reports financials only for its headquarters operation and not for the 176 Catholic Charities offices in individual dioceses.

Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, for example, had $101,010,202 in revenue in its 2024 fiscal year—$82,194,646 of it from government grants.

Just that one diocesan office has received grants equivalent in magnitude to those awarded to national-level non-Catholic faith-based NGOs. In yesterday's post, I mentioned Church World Service. Global Refuge, a Lutheran-affiliated NGO, reported total income of $230,822,000, of which $221,476,000 came from government grants. World Relief, affiliated with the national Association of Evangelicals, reported $163,157,027 total income, of which $126,026,563 came from government grants.

All of these grants expanded enormously under Biden.

Most of these, including individual Catholic Charities offices, now have urgent messages on their websites referring to the financial crises they now have due to the Trump administration's cancellations of these grants. One of my questions is why so few of these NGOs, but especially Catholic Charities, have followed the USCCB's example and filed suit against the deparments that have cut off the funding.

Let's keep in mind that the USCCB is apparently suing over maybe $13 million, maybe $65 million, and layoffs of 50 workers, while Catholic Charities in the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston alone has lost more like $82 million, and non-Catholic NGOs have lost upwards of $100 million each.

One thing this speaks to, though, is the effectveness of the Trump cuts. In a matter of weeks, they've identified the lifeblood of the repopulation movement, grants to faith-based NGOs, and cut off the flow. I would guess that the turn of the money spigot was so sudden and complete that the NGOs just haven't had the budget to keep staff that could respond, much less hire outside attorneys.